Ayham: Mein neues Leben (Ayham: My new Life, 2016, Switzerland) Production Details Synopsis - Film and webisodes 1-17
• Broadcaster: Schweizer Radio from Syria to escape the war. He did not really want to leave his home and his friends, but the danger was too great. The family travelled for five months before starting a new life in Switzerland. The first few months are tough, but at school Ayham soon makes friends with classmates who like to play football. The football coach discovers his talent and makes it possible for him to have a trial with the Grasshopper Club in Zurich. The club then takes him into its junior team for one year.
CBBC Newsround (UK, 2017)
Production Details Synopsis - Ayshah meets child refugees in Greece
• Commissioner: CBBC
CBBC Newsround reporter Ayshah Tull travels to Greece to meet children who have recently fled to Europe from conflict zones, particularly from countries in the Arab world.
In interviews with children and youth (who remain anonymous), Ayshah learns that many of them are currently stranded in Greece and are eagerly hoping to move on and find a new home.
De Kinderburgemeester (The Children’s Mayor, NL, 2017)
De Kinderburgemeester focuses on Yassine, a boy of Moroccan heritage who was Children's Mayor in Gouda for one year. Yassine has two goals for his one-year 'term of office': bringing children from different ethnic backgrounds together and meeting his role model, the Moroccan-born mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb. The clips in the workshop show Yassine sending an email to Aboutaleb, asking if they can
meet. Aboutaleb replies saying that he does not have time, but perhaps Yassine can drop by. After a tour of the town hall, Yassine is told that the mayor is not available. But he does not give up and eventually manages to arrange a meeting, during which the mayor tells him that he has to work ‘extra hard’ as children’s mayor, because many people have prejudices against Moroccan people. The closing scene shows a wistful Yassine as he hands over the role to his successor, Romaissa.
Een jaar zonder mijn ouders (A Year Without My Parents, NL, 2017)
Een jaar zonder mijn ouders puts the spotlight on eleven-year-old Tareq, who has fled war in Syria to live in Europe. Tareq
embarked on this journey without his parents, leaving them behind with his sister and brother. Once arrived in the Netherlands, Tareq starts a new life and goes to school (a clip shown at the workshop).
However, he faces an uncertain future, not knowing if and when he will he see his parents again.
This documentary follows Tareq in this critical period of waiting for a reunion with his family after having been apart for more than a year.
Ferie på Flygtningeøen (Vacation on Refugee Island, Denmark, 2017)
Production Details Synopsis
Ferie på Flygtningeøenexplores the situation of refugees on the Greek island of Samos from the perspective of Alvin, a Danish boy who enjoys a beach holiday with his father (the film’s director). The film opens with Alvin snorkelling in the sea, where he finds a small orange life vest and learns that it must have belonged to a child. Alvin subsequently tries to find and meet children who live in refugee camps on Samos, and hopes to give them candy.
The clips shown during the workshop included Alvin finding the life vest and meeting a group of children in a refugee camp - an encounter that is interrupted by police, after which Alvin and his father spend several hours at the police station.
Hassan og Ramadanen (Hassan and Ramadan, Denmark, 2017)
Production Details Synopsis - Film and webisodes 1-17
• Commissioner/Broadcaster: DR
Hassan og Ramadanen centres on eleven-year-old Hassan who lives in Køge, Denmark, with his family, originally from Iraq. Hassan’s family are Shia Muslims and he has decided he wants to try fasting for the first time during Ramadan, inspired by his older brothers and parents. But how can Hassan concentrate at school, succeed at football, and play with his friends while not eating or drinking from dawn to sunset? Hassan og Ramadanen is a 45-minute documentary film, divided into 17 webisodes of 5-9 minutes duration for distribution as a web series on YouTube.
We showed two clips. In the first, Hassan explains to his family that he would like to join them in fasting. In the second, Hassan and his father talk in the car about how and why they identify Denmark as their home.
Set in Heijplaat, a working-class harbour district in Rotterdam, this observational film introduces five boys who are close friends despite all coming from different religious and cultural
backgrounds. They were born in the Netherlands, but their origins range from Dutch and Turkish to Surinamese, Syrian and Chinese. However, for this close-knit group of friends, these differences do not seem to matter.
The clips we showed of Heijplaters revealed that in an area where containers and ships replace playgrounds, there is not much for the teenagers to do, which makes their friendship particularly important.
Hello Salaam (The Netherlands [NL], Greece, 2017)
This short documentary follows two Dutch pre-teens, Sil (10) and Merlijn (11), who decide to spend their summer vacation at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. From their mothers – who both volunteer in the camps – they have heard stories of children who live there, having made the dangerous crossing from Turkey in unseaworthy boats.
We showed clips depicting Sil’s and Merlijn’s experiences of the camp, including a visit to an inflatable boat ‘graveyard’, handing out food to families crammed in temporary housing, and making friends with a group of refugee boys - aided by a translation app - which prompts them to reflect on how it might be to lose one’s home, and become stranded in a foreign country.
Het Haar van Ahmad (Ahmad’s Hair, NL, 2016)
Production Details Synopsis
Twelve-year old Ahmad has just arrived in the Netherlands from Syria. While he is busy trying to integrate into Dutch society, learn a new language and make new friends, he is also on a heart-warming, personal mission: he is growing his hair, so that it can be donated to a Dutch child who has lost their hair due to illness.
The clips we showed revealed Ahmad’s initial struggle with making new friends and learning Dutch, his growing confidence, and that for him, donating his hair is a way of giving something back for the help he and his family received from the Netherlands.
Neuneinhalb: Karim und Mahdi - Eine Grenzenlose Freundschaft (Nine and a half: Karim and Mahdi - A Boundless Friendship,
Neuneinhalb is a news feature for children. This episode centres on the friendship between Karim and Mahdi, who fled his home in Afghanistan with his family two years ago and now lives in Germany.
The family has not yet been granted asylum and faces
deportation. Nevertheless, Karim and Mahdi enjoy their time together by celebrating Mahdi’s 11th birthday - the first time in his life he is having a birthday party - going swimming and eating lunch with all of Mahdi’s family.
Merna in de Spotlight (Merna in the Spotlight, 2016, Netherlands)
Production Details Synopsis because, as Christians, they were under threat from Islamic State fanatics.
Merna previously only sang in church, but in Lebanon she makes a name for herself on the Arabic version of The Voice Kids. After waiting two years for permission to find a new home, Merna’s biggest dream is simply to be able to live in a safe environment with her family.
My Life: Coming to Britain (2015)
My Life is a documentary series commissioned by CBBC which follows the lives of individual children across the world. My Life:
Coming to Britain follows the lives of two girls from Sudan and a boy from Romania as they try to settle into their new lives in the UK. Rania’s and Marwa's story shows them embarking on a new journey of making friends, learning English and getting used to the weather.
The film shows the girls embracing all things British, from fish and chips to having their first birthday party in the UK.
Part of the My Life Series, New Boys in Town shows 12-year-old Adel, a Syrian refugee recently settled in the UK, embarking on a mission with his friend Elijah to welcome new refugees in his hometown of Bristol. One of them is Ahmad who is spending his first summer in the UK.
The film follows Ahmad, Adel and Elijah at the Bristol Bike Project where Ahmad is given a bike to fix up before the three of them head off to enjoy a cycle ride around the city.
This marks a poignant moment for Ahmad, who has barely ventured out of his flat other than to the supermarket.
According to Kez Margrie, CBBC Executive producer, the series represents ‘a treasure trove of different directing styles’. explosion happened, the glass wouldn’t shatter on us’, explains one girl who fled Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a, with her family. Through the thoughts of children who have fled to Malaysia to escape the dangers of living in a conflict zone, this short film highlights the ongoing war in Yemen.
The children talk about what they miss about their lives in Yemen, whether they want to return to their home country, and what they would do if they were the president of Yemen.
The One Minutes Jr. (NL, 2017)
Production Details Synopsis - My Trip by Marwa and My New Friends by Aya
• Commissioner: UNICEF & The
The One Minutes Jr. is a participatory arts and video initiative that highlights the diversity among children and youth around the
world. Through workshops, children produce videos of 60 seconds on a topic of their choice, and are mentored by adult film professionals. My Trip and My New Friends were made in workshops involving two Syrian girls (Marwa and Aya) who live in refugee accommodation in the Netherlands.
My Trip is an animated treatment of the journey Marwa took with her family to escape the conflict in Syria. In My New Friends, Aya reflects on how she settled into a strange new country by making new friends.
Tro Håb Afghanistan: Laylas Melodi (Faith-Hope-Afghanistan: Layla’s Melody, Denmark, 2013)
Laylas Melodi is one of five films in the series Tro Håb Afghanistan, which follows children in Afghanistan who live in the shadow of conflict in the country. The film follows eleven-year old Layla, who lives in a Kabul orphanage. Her father was killed in the war and she has not seen her mother for four years. However, Layla feels happy in the orphanage, because she can go to school and play music.
Layla learns that her mother is coming to visit her. We showed clips demonstrating how Layla is torn between excitement about the reunion and fear that she might be expected to return to her mother’s village to get married.
Where in the World: Hamza (2017) really trying to capture what they do and where they go. One of the key drivers for us was the sense that a lot of what children see is obviously the news and aid campaigns. That’s all great, but the kind of wider missing context was normal children living ordinary lives, just getting on with it. So we thought it’d be really good to go and film children with their families doing things, going to school, playing with friends and hopefully we achieved quite a lot’.